Top Five Dumbest Republican Quotes of 2012 Include Mitt Romney’s Safety Net for Poor, Binders Full of Women (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Top Five of Dumbest Republican Quotes of 2012 came from Republicans during the presidential campaign.

1. Mitt Romney: “I’m in this race because I care about Americans. I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there.”

2. Mitt Romney: “I went to a number of women’s groups and said ‘Can you help us find folks?’ and they brought us whole binders full of women.”

3. Roger Rivard: On what his father told him: “He also told me one thing, ‘If you do (have premarital sex), just remember, consensual sex can turn into rape in an awful hurry. Because all of a sudden a young lady gets pregnant and the parents are madder than a wet hen and she’s not going to say, ‘Oh, yeah, I was part of the program.’ All that she has to say or the parents have to say is it was rape because she’s underage. And he just said, ‘Remember, Roger, if you go down that road, some girls,’ he said, ‘they rape so easy.’

4. Richard Mourdock: ”I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

POLITICAL SCANDAL: The FBI arrested Trenton NJ Mayor Tony Mack and six other people Monday morning as part of a corruption investigation, WNBC reports. The arrests follow the FBI’s search of Trenton City Hall in July. Federal prosecutors are expected to announce the details of the investigation later Monday.

Two People Ejected from Republican Convention After Throwing Nuts at a Black CNN Camerawoman (Cartoon credit: Toon Draw)

GRAND OLE RACIST PARTY: CNN reports that two people were removed from the Republican National Convention yesterday for throwing nuts at a black CNN camerawoman, saying “This is how we feed animals.” CNN won’t disclose the name of the camerawoman. When Mitt Romney hangs around birthers like Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio and Donald Trump, as well as crack his own birther joke, then you embolden the worst elements in the Republican Party.

Shirley Huntley, a state senator from Queens NY, called an “emergency press conference” Saturday to announce that she would surrender to police on Monday. Huntley’s employees were accused of misusing state funds last year. She claimed that she “doesn’t know what charges” she is actually facing. Um, then why call a press conference to say you are going to surrender to police? The state attorney general’s office responded to Shirley Huntley’s announcement saying, “The appropriate forum in which to respond to the senator is a court of law, where the attorney general will prove all facts according to the rules of evidence. Those facts will speak for themselves.”

Ms. Huntley, 74, was first elected to the Senate in 2006. She had previously served as the president of a community school board. She was one of three Democrats who opposed the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2009 but switched positions to support it last year, contributing to its passage. She has not, however, been a particularly visible presence in Albany; she missed more votes during this year’s legislative session than any other senator, according to an analysis by the New York Public Interest Research Group. Source: NY Tiimes

I am sure Ms. Huntley has enough commonsense to have a lawyer, so feigning ignorance on what possible charges she is facing is strange, very strange. One of her aides and three others have been arrested.

Libertarian favorite Ron Paul doesn’t ‘fully endorse’ Mitt Romney for president. Um, trouble for Romney among Paul supporters? The Romney campaign gave Rep. Paul a chance to speak at the convention, but he turned it down due to the conditions of the offer, the New York Times reports:

Mr. Paul, in an interview, said convention planners had offered him an opportunity to speak under two conditions: that he deliver remarks vetted by the Romney campaign, and that he give a full-fledged endorsement of Mr. Romney. He declined.

“It wouldn’t be my speech,” Mr. Paul said. “That would undo everything I’ve done in the last 30 years. I don’t fully endorse him for president.”

National Journal reports that Rep. Paul Ryan and embattled Rep. Todd “legitimate rape” Akin (R-MO) “share a voting history on abortion rights, including mutual support for a controversial measure that would define embryos as a person. The two men cosponsored another measure that would distinguish ‘forcible rape’ in banning abortion funding, but it was subsequently withdrawn after outrage. Akin, Ryan, and Mitt Romney also back less-controversial measures, such as defunding Planned Parenthood.”

“That broader link gives Democrats a chance to push a debate about abortion and women’s health back into the presidential race’s limelight, putting the GOP ticket on the defensive over an issue it would rather avoid and with a group of voters, females, it has already struggled to attract.”

Um, what we have here is another person on the Romney-Ryan ticket, a foursome — Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand and now Todd Akin.

Whoopi Goldberg and John Edwards former ‘clean-up woman’ Rielle Hunter sparred during her appearance on “The View” to promote her trashy memoir, “What Really Happened,” as if anyone in their right mind would take her word for what really happened in their relationship. Whoopi Goldberg delivered a smackdown when she brought up how Rielle Hunter treated Elizabeth Edwards in the book saying, “you trash a dead lady, whose husband you had an affair and a baby with, did it not occur to you that maybe that might not be the the right tone to take?” Goldberg also added “that was a crappy thing to do.” Hunter said she merely wanted “to tell the truth.” To that, Goldberg said, the whole thing makes Rielle Hunter “look bad, schemey, heartless.

Of course, ever the true narcissist, Rielle Hunter said she didn’t want to be viewed as a home wrecker. Whoopi Goldberg set her straight: “You had unprotected sex with a married man, and had a baby, and then allowed people to pretend it wasn’t happening. You put an entire nation in a very awkward position, you have to see where people are coming from.”

Rielle Hunter revealed that she is no longer in a relationship with John Edwards. Um, did she really think he was going to ride off into the sunset with her to build a life together? Old habits die hard. Elizabeth Edwards is laughing from the grave. All I can say is America needs to end its love affairs with train wrecks like Rielle Hunter.

In a report appearing on Fox News website, it is suggested that Thomas Donilon, the national security adviser, is a likely source in The Times reporting, considering he is “the commenter of record on events.” If Thomas Donilon is in fact the source of the leaks, President Obama should be held at his word and this man terminated immediately. Developing story….

President Obama is about to get another stinging rebuke, as the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) is calling for the end of an $8 billion Medicare quality bonus program that congressional Republicans have criticized as a political ploy. The GAO report, which is slated for release Monday, states the $8.3 billion the administration has earmarked for quality bonuses to Medicare Advantage insurance plans, would essentially delay the pain of cuts to the plans under the new health care law. The Obama administration is defending the program saying that without the bonuses many plans wouldn’t have an incentive to improve quality.

Medicare Advantage is a popular private insurance alternative to the traditional health care program for seniors. More than 3,000 private plans serve nearly 12 million beneficiaries, about one-fourth of Medicare recipients. They offer lower out-of-pocket costs, usually in exchange for some limitations on choice.

President Barack Obama’s health care law trimmed Medicare Advantage to compensate for prior years of overpayments that had allowed the plans to offer attractive benefits — and pocket healthy profits. Source

In other words, they want to kick the can down the road for someone else to deal with, namely our children and their children. I guess it doesn’t mean much to the Obama White House that this bonus program is characterized as the costliest demonstration program in Medicare history.

The state of Georgia has settled a lawsuit over its failure to offer poverty-stricken people who sign up for public assistance an opportunity to register to vote. The press release issued by the plaintiffs state:

A coalition of national voting rights groups have secured a landmark settlement with the State of Georgia to ensure that voter registration is offered to all public assistance applicants. The state has settled a lawsuit, brought by the coalition on behalf of the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP and the Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda, alleging widespread violations of Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).

Georgia’s Secretary of State and its Department of Human Services (DHS) have agreed to comply with Section 7 of the NVRA, which requires that public assistance agency clients be provided with the opportunity to register to vote every time they apply for or renew benefits, or when they submit a change of address.

Public assistance in numbers:

….[T]here has been a dramatic decline in the number of persons registering to vote at Georgia public assistance offices since the NVRA first took effect in the mid-1990s. During the 1995-1996 reporting period, DHS received over 100,000 registration applications, but in 2010 the number of registrations had dropped to a mere 4,430. By comparison, in 2009, Georgia, on average, received nearly 70,000 applications each month for just one of the public assistance programs (Food Stamps) covered by the NVRA’s voter registration requirements. Source

I wonder where the Republican legislators in the state of Georgia are today? Probably trying to find another way to stick it to the poor.